Settlement and Local Histories of the Early Deccan

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This book has been put together with the earnest intention of presenting at one place my forays into understanding the early history of the Deccan. Apart from my other research, my interest at looking deep into the early history of the Deccan emerged out of my stay in Hyderabad for the most part of my academic life.

Having been primarily trained in the use of textual sources for my doctoral work, research on early Deccan, where texts for the ancient period are largely absent, led me on to looking at other sources, like those emanating out of archaeological excavations. My initial interest in looking closely at the local particularity of the Deccan emerged when my professional pre-occupation with teaching history at the newly established University of Hyderabad propelled me to prepare new courses on the region that would have some relevance to students from the region, who were the first primary entrants to the new University. Their varied locations in different modern states that broadly covered what we have designated as the Deccan, then also provided me the immediate impetus to familiarize myself with the history of localities that they hailed from.

At the outset therefore, I would like to thank the several batches of students that took courses with me for their attention and interest in taking these courses. Most significantly, my research students followed the cue and took up topics of research on different parts of the Deccan that also educated me on the still unearthed wealth of information that lay buried on the early and early medieval history of the Deccan. These students know well, the pains with which we all worked hard to bring to light this fascinating history. They cannot be thanked enough. Their endeavours became mine and vice versa leading to an energizing dialogic collaboration that benefited all of us.

Though my first individual interactions with the diversity of life around Hyderabad and visits to numerous historical destinations across the Deccan and South India were peripheral, they subsequently led me on to take up serious projects of study that resulted in research writings in the form of articles that are now put together in this book.

Two major projects that supported my research activities in a focused manner are the French Institute Pondicherry collaborative project with colleagues from other Universities of South India, namely, ‘The Digital Historical Atlas of South India’ funded by the Ford Foundation and, more recently, the interface collaboration on a project entitled: ‘From Dargah to Patancheru’ funded by the University Grants Commission under its UPE I and II pro- grammes given to the University of Hyderabad. They provided not only financial support but, since they were part of collaborative activity they energized the academic questions posed and provided directions to how my research expanded. I would like to acknowledge this support and thank all concerned, who knowingly and unknowingly, became part of these endeavours.

Having written the articles, now converted into chapters, over a period of time and in different publishing locations, there would inevitably be some overlap of thought and data, which I have tried to minimize while editing them for this volume. By and large these articles had pertained to the early Deccan with only two of them (Chapters 6 and 8) bringing in the early medieval period. The last chapter veers into the contemporary period in order to take a look at the state of heritage and the challenges this poses for its conservation for posterity. Despite the chronological order in which they were published, I have tried to thematically divide them so as to put forward an argument that from our general concerns we should move to particular or individual themes of research and then finally to also suggest that the individual can only survive and flourish in the midst of interactions. Thus, we have three broad parts in which the chapters are organized, namely, Part I entitled ‘Establishing the Terrain’, Part II ‘Standing on the Particular’ and Part III ‘Accessing the Other’. The rationale for doing so has been detailed in the Introduction to the volume.

While preparing the chapters on the issue of the way each of them had different citation styles, I have made an attempt to use a common footnoting style and have prepared a combined bibliography to address these citations. Diacritical marks have been kept to the minimal and have been made uniform across chapters.

I have acknowledged at the beginning of the book, all the editors and publishers who have granted me permission to reprint some of the articles. I would like to now thank them for all the help rendered. Two of the chapters (Chapters 5 and 9) have not been published earlier. For a couple of them (Chapters 1 and 6) some changes in text have been made, while for the majority only marginal changes have been effected.

The long period during which these articles were written has meant that I am indebted to innumerable scholars and colleagues with whom I have shared the ideas incorporated in these articles.

Some of the articles initially were presented at national and inter- national seminars and conferences-Chapter | is based on my Presidential Address for the Ancient Section to the Andhra Pradesh History Congress held at Guntur, Chapter 2 was first presented at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Chapter 3 was presented at the Centre for Archaeological Studies in Eastern India and later at a conference at the Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden, The Netherlands, Chapter 4 was prepared for a conference organized by the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada and later presented at the Centre for Excellence at the University of Heidelberg, Chapter 7 was prepared for presentation at the Telugu University, Hyderabad and Chapter 9 was first written for oral presentation at a conference organized by the Department of History, University of Hyderabad. It was at all these locations and the meeting with scholars who reacted to my presentation that I was provided by the necessary impetus to proceed further and refine the gestating ideas to ultimately then write and publish the articles that form the core of this book. I sincerely thank all my colleagues and friends for having provided this energetic academic environment which enabled me to complete my research.

As soon as one turns to write a regional history, there is an anxiety to define the region of our study in specific terms. It is our intention in this volume to try and define the Deccan but at the same time, there is a recognition that within this large landmass of the subcontinent there are flexible boundaries and heterogeneous entities that have continually changed to define her character from time to time. The simplistic paradigm of looking at linearity and spatial confinement have been challenged to reflect on the earliest historical foundations of her personality that can provide a basis around which questions can be posed to understand her social, economic, political and ideological evolution.

The objective existence of a ‘region’ is questionable. In a minimal sense it is a ‘bounded space’ but the accompanying questions of who/what delimits a region remain. What are its distinguishing characteristics? And how do disciplines define regions? These automatically complicate the nature of that ‘bounded space’. Apart from geographic markers that may define a region, one must at the first instance begin with the recognition that the historical conceptualization of regions is accompanied by several factors- political and military activities, technological and economic processes of change and administrative actions by states/kingdoms and so on. Regions, thus, are never given or are self-evident entities of analysis. They are necessarily marked out with human interaction- political, technological, economic, social and religious. These defining facets have to be delineated from extant material remains since it is often the case that all of them may not define the entire region. In some cases they may coincide with each other and make it possible for us to outline certain clear spatial and cultural variables that give a region its temporal identity. Eventually we must begin with the assumption that the notion of a region remains tenuous. Further, that it also interacts with spatial entities beyond its boundaries and therefore, social identities within a given region survive only through their cultural structures and the network of places that hosted them implying of course social and economic functions, which are now no longer visible. Thus, only the extant material remains enable one to embody a region with a semblance of identity while absences of what has not survived can only be imagined and interpreted upon.

It is commonplace to follow rather simplistically an old English adage ‘Geography is about Maps and History is about Chaps’. This could not be more off the mark in today’s interdisciplinary environment and neither parts of this statement are of course true. The former is now increasingly understood in terms of human intervention with space that changes boundaries in time and the latter is today a discipline that must necessarily be more inclusive.

Given the development of both the disciplines in contemporary times, there are a few key issues that have to be highlighted at the outset. Most historians value knowledge of the past in a way, which gives primacy to the dimensions of ‘time’ rather than ‘space’ in understanding historical reality.' Today this, as the only legitimate view of the past, is under scrutiny by geographers, who wish to identify the spatial context as being far more significant in social science theory than has hitherto been the case. Thus Soja, while introducing his Post Modern Geographies, notes that space is immediately viewed in terms of its multiple dimensions but when we begin to describe this space, language imposes linearity. In other words, a sequence is described and therefore, there is a losing out on the simultaneity of what space gives us and this is then taken over by ‘time’ and, over a longer duration, by History. The multiplicity and simultaneity of historical events and processes has to be kept in mind so that the spatial context can be shown not only to change over time but that at a given point of time, it is inhabited by co-existing historical levels of development.

The relevance of this understanding for looking closely at Deccan’s history is that over space and time we can highlight the interconnectedness of heterogeneity and variability that define certain geo- graphical and social compositions that by their very innate nature are complex. The focus on a study of particular sub-regions and localities of the Deccan therefore, became necessary as this enabled an analysis of the inter-dependence of such complex entities, which then showcased diversity and variability but yet, were part of an interconnected pattern of social change. We draw in contemporary theory’ to make the critical point that complex regions like the Deccan throw up intransient forces that do not collapse all diversity into singular and homogenous models of growth. We argue in these chapters that both the particularity of space and the specificity of time have to be galvanized to discuss this trajectory of change and it is for this reason that for certain elements of this exercise Taylor’s use of the terminology ‘unruly complexity’ comes in useful.

It is our submission that environments that lie at the interceses of rich ecological diversity survive only in dependence with each other. It is the co-existence of a variety of landscapes in close proximity to each other that then defines their character of sustenance. This was noticed well into the twentieth century by not only British officials but also ordinary travellers who noted the challenge of traveling across this landscape’s diversity."

It was a terrain difficult to travel across as over large parts one was confronted with a landscape that was still marked with huge Archean rock-formations. These are considerably older than any human structural interventions on this landscape. One does not subscribe to the notion that nature alone determines the pace of a civilization’s progress but one would concur with Griffith that ‘Nature determines the route of development, while Man deter- mines the rate and the stage’ (emphasis added).

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